The occurrence of major oil spill incidents at sea has required the institution of cleanup operations for removal of resulting oil slicks from the seawater. One well established cleanup operation involves burning of the oil slick in place which often results in release of a significant amount of smoke into the atmosphere creating an air pollution problem. Where in-situ ignition and burning of the oil slick is not feasible, skimming of the oil slick by means of skimmer vessels has been resorted to. The skimmer vessels collect the oil from the oil slick locations with a significant amount of water, such as 9 gallons of water for each gallon of oil recovered. The containment tanks associated with such skimmer vessels are rapidly filled with volumetrically large oil and water collections having relatively small amounts of the oil requiring nevertheless frequent return to shore for off-loading thereby causing interruptions in the cleanup operation during which oil slick spreading occurs. Because of such cleanup interruption difficulty, oil combustion aboard the skimming vessel may be resorted to for a more rapid and continuous cleanup operation. However, such on-board combustion of the collected oil also involves considerable air pollution from in-situ discharge of gas combustion products.
It is therefore an important object of the present invention to provide for more efficient and less polluting combustion and disposal of oil and water collections during a continuous skimming type of oil slick cleanup operation.